


It's All in the Genre

by Rizobact



Series: Curb Finds [29]
Category: Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers Generation One
Genre: Alternate Universe, Challenge Response, M/M, Prompt - Scary Movies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-26
Updated: 2016-11-26
Packaged: 2018-09-01 09:30:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8619055
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rizobact/pseuds/Rizobact
Summary: Smokescreen likes to be scared, but scary movies just aren’t all that scary anymore for him. Maybe he’s been watching the wrong kind.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Friends with Benefits](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8412250) by [dragonofdispair](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dragonofdispair/pseuds/dragonofdispair). 



> Written for the Transformers Rare Pairing [Fall 2016 Bingo Challenge ](http://tf-rare-pairing.livejournal.com/667205.html) off a custom bingo card.

Movies were fun. Smokescreen liked fun. Even more than fun, Smokescreen liked a good rush, which made scary movies the best kind of movies, as far as he was concerned.

Usually he would go with a big group of friends to one of the low-end drive-ins scattered throughout Praxus. No need to pay the higher rates to go to the fancier theaters; they weren’t showing the kinds of films he wanted to see anyway. Everyone would pay their parking fees and congregate in a big pack, engaging in some good-natured shoving and teasing over it being ‘just a movie’ before the show started. Then they all took turns ribbing each other for being scared anyway. Every time someone let out a startled engine rev, honk, or shout, the others would pounce and make fun of them relentlessly, until something scared them and the tables turned. It was always a great time, and there were never any hard feelings. It wasn’t a competition, after all. It didn’t really matter who’d been scared the most, or least, at the end of the night.

Of course, part of the reason it didn’t matter was that Smokescreen was always the hardest to scare, even though he really  _ enjoyed  _ being scared by a good movie. Maybe he’d seen too many of them. Maybe they were becoming too predictable. Whatever the reason, the result was a unanimous agreement that the highest praise a movie could receive was that it had frightened ‘even the Unscareable Smokescreen’. 

That unofficial title went unchallenged for decades… and then Smokescreen met Ricochet.

It was a while after they’d started not-seeing each other before they watched a scary movie together, or any movie at all, for that matter. Theirs wasn’t  _ that  _ kind of relationship. Nope; Ricochet was just uncomplicated sex, a chance to indulge a kink most Praxans, if they knew about it, would think was a sure sign Smokescreen needed to see a medic. After all, what kind of normal mech got off on being scared?

Maybe Smokescreen wasn’t normal.

Fortunately, Ricochet didn’t care about normal. Ricochet only cared about having a good time, and he was  _ very  _ creative when it came to finding new and innovative ways to get Smokescreen’s fuel pump hammering. Most of Ricochet’s ideas stirred a swirl of nervousness in him just hearing out the gangster’s propositions, but he always found himself eagerly looking forward to the next one, each and every time.

Which was why, the first time Ricochet had suggested they go to a movie, Smokescreen had been a bit skeptical. Movies weren’t scary. Not even most scary movies were  _ really  _ scary. And what did that have to do with fragging? Smokescreen couldn’t believe Ricochet was actually asking him out on a  _ date,  _ of all things (though he knew better than to say any of those thoughts out loud).

“Aww, c’mon,” Ricochet had insisted with a  sinister charming grin when an unenthusiastic Smokescreen expressed his doubts. “Y’ain’t never watched a scary movie like  _ this _ b’fore.”

Well, what could it hurt? Still not convinced, Smokescreen had nonetheless agreed.

The next night, Smokescreen drove to the address Ricochet had given him. It wasn't a place he was familiar with, though it was easy enough to find. Ricochet was already there waiting for him when Smokescreen arrived, idling in alt mode just outside the light of a streetlamp.

Smokescreen snorted as he pulled up. "Is hiding in the shadows supposed to be scary?" He didn't transform immediately, instead waiting for a cue from the gangster. There weren't any theaters nearby that Smokescreen knew of; maybe Ricochet needed to lead the rest of the way to some hidden hole in the wall. Wouldn't be the first time, especially around little Polyhex.

"Nah, scary comes later. Jus' don't need that much light t'see ya comin'." Right, Polys and their nightvision. Smokescreen watched Ricochet inch towards a deeper shadow beyond the streetlamp. "C'mon. Ain't much farther from here, but ya gotta know where yer goin'." That Smokescreen should follow him was implied as he set off, winking his taillights flirtatiously.

As promised, it was a short drive. Their destination looked like just another cheap, worn down pub. Smokescreen was more curious than apprehensive as they transformed and walked inside, being quite comfortable in such establishments. Familiar as he was with the gambling circuit, he knew places like these often had hidden rooms for the big stakes games. Maybe this one had a small private theater tucked away instead?

“Betcha already guessed th’back room here ain’t fer cards,” Ricochet grinned, walking over to the counter to grab drinks for both of them. “This fine establishment,” he nodded to the bartender, a much larger Poly than Rico himself, who smiled back as he handed over a pair of vividly glowing cubes, “shows indie films ‘n foreign productions, ‘stead of all th’ mainstream stuff, and the one they got playin’ this week’s one I think’s right up yer alley.”

The way he said it, combined with the leer on his face, was suggestive of other things up  _ other  _ places, and Smokescreen felt his frame warming slightly in response. He still didn’t think he’d really get much of a scare from the movie, but even without indulging in that  _ particular  _ kink, Ricochet was a fantastic frag. Smokescreen wasn’t going to complain if his plan was just for them to get it on in the back of the theater.

Ricochet’s choice of seats was certainly in line with that theory. He pulled Smokescreen to the last row, brushing teasingly against his plating as he got himself settled. The room wasn’t very large, only big enough for twelve mechs their size, and there were only three others there. They clustered towards the front: a mech by himself in the front row, and two femmes sitting in the row behind him. That left the row in front of Ricochet and Smokescreen unoccupied, and Ricochet casually took advantage of the opportunity to drape his feet over the back of the empty chair in front of him.

“Trust me,” he purred as the lights dimmed, snaking a hand around behind Smokescreen below the built-in accommodations for doorwings in his chair. “This’s gonna be  _ good.” _

Right away, Smokescreen realized this was a different kind of scary movie than he was used to. Instead of the usual group of friends setting out on an ill-fated adventure, or spooky location with a haunted history, the film opened on a perfectly ordinary household. The lead actors, a Polyhexian groundframe and an Iaconian (or was he Polyhexian too?) rotary, were obviously a couple that had been together for some time quite contentedly. Smokescreen kept waiting for them to bring up some significant life event that would inevitably go horribly wrong, like a move to a new (cursed!) place, a (demonic!) sparkling, or a (doomed!) change at one of their jobs. But no — they simply woke up together, had their morning energon, and said their goodbyes with no hint of foreshadowing whatsoever.

Confused, Smokescreen watched as the rotary made his way to work while the camera lingered over (what seemed to him) completely random things. Was there some sort of significance to the transit stop signal? To the trickles of acid running down the etched grooves on the walls of a solitary building beside an empty park dotted with crystal clear acid puddles?

There were no loud noises, no sudden jump scares. The soundtrack was soft and quiet, and the dialogue was quiet too. The rotary spent the day in his office in a series of short intercut scenes, all of them totally ordinary… except... 

Something wasn’t right. A beat too long of silence on a call. A blip on a monitor that vanished too quickly to see what it was. An eerie note, out of place in the music—

“Gah!” Smokescreen jumped as he felt something unexpected brush his knee.

“What? I didn’t do nothin’,” Ricochet said innocently as Smokescreen turned to glare at him. “Somethin’ the matter?”

It had to have been him; there was no other explanation. Ricochet was the only one close enough to have touched him. But the black mech’s feet were still up on the chairs in front of them where Smokescreen could see them, and with a cube in one hand and his other arm pinned behind Smokescreen’s back, how could he have reached his knee?

“Yer missin’ the movie,” Ricochet admonished, pointing back at the screen around his drink. “Pay attention.”

Still suspicious, Smokescreen turned to face forward again. This time, he split his attention between the screen and the mech beside him… until he found himself caught up in the movie again. The rotary was going home, passing the park, the building, the transit stop. His mate met him inside their home, welcoming him with a smile.

That smile… was there something wrong with it? Smokescreen wasn’t sure. Whatever he thought he’d seen, it was there and gone in a second. But it had looked an  _ awful  _ lot like that edge between friendly and frightening that Ricochet got, sometimes...

Smokescreen glanced over at Ricochet, and felt his vents catch as he thought he saw a glint of that  _ exact  _ grin on his face before it vanished. Ricochet turned to him, his expression completely relaxed and friendly. “Fun, innit?” he said, to all appearances just a mech enjoying sharing something with a friend.

It made Smokescreen want to shiver, but he suppressed the reflex and nodded instead before turning back to the screen.

They watched as the couple had their evening energon and talked about their days. Mundane conversation, accompanied by those strange pauses on random objects. Was there something ominous about the silver flakes? Were they poisoned? What about the large handle on the cupboard in the kitchen, the one they put their glasses away in? Could it be turned into a weapon somehow?

A strange whispering sound in the night woke the rotary after they’d gone to bed. Smokescreen held his breath as the mech looked over to his mate, only to find him peacefully sleeping. The camera panned over to the empty doorway to their room as the light from the rotary’s optics faded back into recharge. No one was there, but Smokescreen couldn’t shake the feeling that there  _ should  _ be.

Had there been? In that final second before it all went black?

“Whaddaya think so far?” Ricochet whispered, and this time Smokescreen couldn’t suppress his shiver. Ricochet’s voice had sounded for a second like that strange whispering sound from the movie, and Smokescreen had to look around to make sure there was no one creeping up on them in the theater.

“It’s interesting,” he whispered back, not wanting to let on how disturbed he was. Why was he so nervous and twitchy? It wasn’t like anything had even  _ happened  _ yet, for Primus’ sake! He took a fortifying sip of his drink, and kept watching.

The next morning dawned on the screen the same as the first, and again the rotary went to work, passing the transit signal, the building, and the park. Another ordinary day, followed by another ordinary night. Only… the static from the monitors at work. That was the static from the monitors at work, flickering in the Polyhexian’s visor just before they turned out the lights to sleep!

This time Smokescreen was expecting the strange whispering sound, but it still sent a chill through him when it started. He strained his optics searching the room, trying to spot anything out of the ordinary, anything at all. 

Nothing.

Then it all started again. Another day, another circuit past the transit signal, the building, the park; then back home, by the park — were the previously still puddles rippling, ever so slightly? — and past the building — the dripping acid hadn’t been that color before, had it? Almost the color of energon…

The transit signal, once the rotary passed it, flashed a warning.

_ Do not proceed. _

His mate’s smile was  _ definitely  _ not right when he greeted the rotary at the door, and this time, finally, the mech didn’t just brush it off like he had all the other strange signs. But his mate reassured him, his smile back to normal as he prepared their meal and started discussing what the couple should do with their day off tomorrow.

_ Don’t let him put the silver flakes in it! _

The camera focus wobbled just slightly, rippling like the still acid, as the rotary drank. Smokescreen suddenly remembered his own long forgotten cube, and was surprised to discover his fingers tightly clenched around it. He set it aside, unable to bring himself to drink  from it, even though it was still half full.

The rotary woke for the third time to the whispering sound in the dark, and once again he turned to his side to look for his mate — but he wasn’t there!  _ Panic. _ But he couldn’t get up! He was tied down with something, limbs pinned to the mattress as he thrashed against his bonds. The whispering deepened into a chuckle instead of fading away, echoing out of a discordant darkness that was somehow more complete than any of the previous nights, and filled with awful things.

Smokescreen was  _ not  _ huddling back in his chair. He was  _ not  _ curling into the arm wrapped around his waist, and he was  _ absolutely  _ not groping blindly for Ricochet’s hand until the gangster set down his cube to twine their fingers together.

The only illumination on the screen came from the rotary’s lights, all of which he had turned on full blast in an attempt to find his captor. But his efforts were in vain. The darkness swallowed his light, concealing whoever — or  _ whatever  _ — was hiding within. He continued to struggle, crying out for his mate, pleading in turns for him to run, to get away; to come back, to save him.

_ WhisssshhCRACK!!! _

Smokescreen flinched as the rotary howled, his main searchlight suddenly shattered by a blow that came out of nowhere. It came again, and again, ruthlessly smashing plating and putting out each of the rotary’s other lights, until only his optics remained, flickering fitfully with his pain and fear.

There were no words; no taunts, no threats. Only the rotary’s labored venting, which Smokescreen was having trouble hearing over his own, and that deep, dark, rasping chuckle. Whatever was doing this had no interest in anything other than  _ hurting; _ it had no need to explain itself or its actions. This was madness, but there was no method to it — at least, none that Smokescreen could see. It was  _ horrible. _

Suddenly, the rotary was able to throw up his arm to block the next blow! His arms — they were free! And his legs were too! Rolling off the berth, he staggered blindly for the door, the always open door that was suddenly shut against him now. He fumbled with the latch as the blows continued, disembodied laughter rising with the score. Smokescreen felt his sparkbeat pounding along with it, feeling trapped and claustrophobic until the mech managed to successfully open the door and fell through it.

Scrabbling forward on the floor, the rotary looked back into the darkness behind him, only to see it curling in tendrils beyond the bounds of the doorframe. With a primal yell, he lurched to his feet and ran down the hallway. The inky black followed, swallowing the lights along the walls as it sent its laugher ahead to cut the rotary off.

Blocked from making his way to the front door, the rotary threw himself into the kitchen, desperately hunting for something to defend himself with. He knocked a chair over into the table, sending bright silver flakes scattering across the floor from the upended container. They sparkled like static before winking out, overpowered by the encroaching darkness.

Smokescreen tried to remember what else had been in the kitchen, but he couldn’t think. Everything was moving so fast. There was nothing to orient on, no solid ground, no point of reference. He felt dizzy as the rotary spun manically, whirling his blades in an attempt to fend off his attacker. It worked — until whatever the darkness had been using to batter him connected with one of them, bending the living metal with a screech as loud as the scream it tore from the mech’s vocalizer. 

Reeling, screaming, weeping, the rotary fell backwards.  _ THWACK!!  _ A hollow sound, different from the others, cut through the laughter like a gunshot, and the mech collapsed in a heap. Flashes of light popped across the screen, one by one going out as his optics finally failed. But just before he passed out completely, a new light appeared above him — a familiar light. A frightening light. 

His mate’s static-laden visor hovered in the black as everything went silent.

Then it was gone.

There was a moment of complete and utter darkness, before… daylight. Daylight returned to the screen, brightening the kitchen where the shattered rotary lay on the floor surrounded by silver flakes, blades bent beneath his frame. The handle of the cupboard door dangled above him, hanging loosely like something had smashed into it. Like  _ he  _ had smashed into it, denting the back of his helm. 

Slowly the rotary tried to sit up, only to let out a pained hiss as his entire frame protested. The sound had his mate rushing in from the other room, first aid supplies haphazardly piled in his arms. Frantically, the rotary tried to escape, to flee his worried mate. He kept lashing out, unable to believe it had all been nothing but a dream.

_ Don’t come any closer! _

It wasn’t until the medics arrived to sedate him that the rotary stopped fighting. His mate watched sadly as he was loaded into the ambulance to be taken to the hospital, concern in every word as he promised he would be there for him. That they would figure this out. Together.

From inside the ambulance, the rotary watched his mate as the doors closed. In the last sliver of light, his worried frown flattened out, expression going eerily blank… and then he smiled.

Smokescreen sat paralyzed as a final flicker of static filled that visor, then the entire screen, before fading again to black. He didn’t even realize that was the end of the movie until the credits started scrolling across the screen, unsettlingly tranquil music playing as a backdrop. What was that? What  _ was  _ that?! How could it be over? How could  _ that  _ be the end?! They hadn’t explained what that thing was! Where had it come from? What had triggered it attacking? Why had it targeted them? Where-what-who-how- _ why?? _

“So. Not too scary fer ya, was it?”

Smokescreen turned to look at Ricochet — and  _ shrieked. _

***

It was a good thing Ricochet had gotten them a room at a nearby motel to spend the rest of the night. Smokescreen had insisted — quite reasonably, he felt! — that Ricochet owed him for the static filter he’d downloaded onto his visor. Ricochet hadn’t objected, though he’d continued to tease Smokescreen about his reaction until they were behind closed doors and Smokescreen silenced him with an intense kiss.

Normally Ricochet would have turned the tables on him after a minute or two, taking control of the kiss and pushing Smokescreen back against the wall, or down onto the berth. This time, perhaps as a way of making up to him, he let Smokescreen remain in control. The fear had been foreplay; the sex itself was about comfort.

_ Psychological  _ comfort, at any rate.  _ Physically,  _ things still got a little rough. Smokescreen didn’t exactly ‘punish’ Ricochet for the stunt he’d pulled, but he definitely took on a more aggressive role than he usually did in the berth with the gangster, and Ricochet let him. It wound up being thoroughly enjoyable for them both, and it was only after going several rounds that they collapsed together on the berth in tangle of exhausted limbs.

“That,” Smokescreen sighed, tracing a finger idly along a seam on Ricochet’s arm, “was  _ terrifying.” _

“That was some scream you let out all right,” Ricochet snickered, knowing Smokescreen was talking about the movie and not what they’d done after. He returned the caress with the backs of his fingers, claws carefully tucked out of the way. “And yer face was _priceless.”_

“You were recording me?” Somehow Smokescreen wasn’t surprised. “How much?”

“Oh, just a coupla short vids here n’ there,” Ricochet replied, too-casually. “Nothin’ that’d embarrass ya or anything.”

“Uh huh. Suuure,” Smokescreen said disbelievingly, though he was looking forward to laughing at his reactions when he had more energy. Right now he just wanted to keep cuddling and take a much needed nap.

Ricochet seemed to have the same idea. “Remind me t’show ya later,” he said sleepily, curling in closer as their plating started to cool. “‘M glad ya liked the movie. Figured y’might not’ve been familiar with Poly horror thrillers, an’ they ain’t nothin’ like yer basic slasher flick. Way scarier, in my opinion.”

They really were, Smokescreen thought as he drifted off. And watching with Ricochet had been an  _ experience. _

Smokescreen couldn’t wait to do it again.


End file.
